Jan Steenman's work is protean. From performance to sculpture to pictorial representation, the artist explores multiple themes: his own physical limits, as well as those of the infra-organic, figuration, and language.

"Veritas humanum est" is a singular sculptural proposition in his production. For the first time, one can distinguish a body in its entirety, altered by the presence of supernumerary organs.

The creature seems to have united with its reflection; everything is, at minimum, doubled. Like a tree with proliferating roots, eight plantar arches anchor the work to the ground. Then four hands come together and veil, erect and modest, the groin region. The torso is adorned with two pairs of breasts, while the arms, spread but not open, accompany a viridescent interlace that springs from the neck. Ovidian, the sculpture arches with the presence of a carapace on its back. It seems petrified at the moment of its metamorphosis. The face, finally, duplicitous like Janus or the Androgyne, bears a panoramic gaze deserted by iris and pupil.

Mute, anophthalmic, mythically deformed, one discerns in this composition, reminiscent of Mary Shelley, the faces and body of Veritas, as Jan conceives it. Like a perverted justice that has been deprived of its judgment attributes, this Truth is voiceless, fragmentary, and above all, equivocal. (superfu) It is both the statement and its opposite, making perjury its ethic, leaving the world of men in doubt and irresolution. To the distraught traveler who addresses her, she responds only with ellipsis, appearing troubled, oceanic – her color. All those who returned from the labyrinth where she resides evoke her through litotes: the Truth they interrogated was young and beautiful – that was her last imperative, categorical order. In the image of the absolute imperfection of the beings who worship her, Jan's Veritas remains resolutely human.

Text by Nessim Kaufmann.